Marlene Dumas
Click to EnlargeLot number: 4
Details: Would Jesus have done the same?
Pen and brush and ink on paper
Signed, dated 1994 and annotated 'You could ask yourself, would Jesus have done the same?'
Work exhibited in Intimate Relations Exhibition, South Africa
44 x 38 cm
17.3 x 14.9 in
Executed in 1994
Provenance: Donated by the Artist
Estimate: £15,000 - £20,000
Artist biography:
Born in 1953 in Cape Town
Studied Visual Arts at Cape Town University (1972-75) and completed her studies in Haarlem, in The Netherlands.
The relation between art and female beauty, art and pornography, female models and models of art have been a constant theme for Marlene Dumas. Her work recalls the painterly gestures of Expressionism, whilst combining the critical distance of Conceptual art with the pleasures of eroticism. Some of her images are derived from Polaroids of friends and lovers, others from glossy magazines and porno pictures. Through her delicately painted oil-on-canvas or ink-and-watercolour works on the female form as well as portraits of children and imagery from contemporary events, she comments on the state of painting today.
One of Dumas ' most recent exhibitions, 'Measuring Your Own Grave' was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and ran until February 2009. In 1995 she represented Holland in the Venice Biennale, and in 1996 the Tate Gallery exhibited a selection of her works on paper. Her awards include The Coutts Award, The Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation, Monte Carlo and David Roëll Prijs and the Prins Bernard Fonds, Amsterdam.